


the conclusion to the end of the world, and what Clay found there

by taffeta



Category: Cell - Stephen King
Genre: Character Study, Clay misses his wife, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Johnny is fine he's just psychic now, M/M, glimpses of domestic life, my god these bitches r gay! good for them, no verbal declarations of love they just kind of fall into it, technically the narrative is linear but..., this reads more like snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taffeta/pseuds/taffeta
Summary: The world is nothing like it was before, and Clay is caught in between wanting what once was, and what could be, when he reunites with Tom and Jordan at a farm after the end of the world.
Relationships: Tom McCourt/Clayton Riddell
Kudos: 6





	1. by chance, a reunion

**Author's Note:**

> this was longer than i expected it to be. basically ten thousand words of trying to figure out clay's character, a dude who now has a mind reading kid, a dead wife, and a crush on some old guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clay and johhny meet some old friends at an outpost in new england.

Johnny had a tight grip on his fingers, and like the phoners before them, the survivors of the massacre moved together in a throng. More than once, Clay accidentally brushed up against the body of a stranger, and his muttered apologies were met with a quick nod of acknowledgment, or more likely, nothing at all. As if he wasn’t even there.

So as not to get lost in the vast crowd, Johnny pressed himself close to Clay, silent as always, but taking in the sights and sounds outside of Salem, Massachusetts, eyes wide and full of wonder at all the people around them. Had they ever been to Massachusetts before this? Clay didn’t think so, but the memories of what once was have been muddled. 

Up ahead, the lights of the functioning military base cut through coming darkness, and the cries of the soldiers with the large firearms saddled in their hands break through the near-silent crowd of survivors. Clay couldn’t help but bite the inside of his cheek as a pang of excitement (or perhaps terror) struck him in the chest. They were there for a reason; both of them, him and Johnny, and yet, he had no idea of where to start his search. 

For all Clay knows, Tom and the rest of them, his little makeshift family in place of his desired one, up and went all over New England. Hell, what stopped any of them from going further South? Who was to say that Tom and Jordan and Denise and Dan weren’t somewhere like Florida, enjoying the empty beaches and reduced hotel prices now that everyone was dead, or a phoner zombie? 

Clay thought of where he would start once they entered the safe zone—who he can ask, how he could even describe them without a picture or anything physical that someone can look at, _have you seen my friends one of them is a short, brown man with curly hair the other is white with a brownish-blond-ish shaved cut the other should probably still be pregnant and the last one is like, fourteen_ —when he heard a name being shouted over the rising din of survivors, many of them who'd begun chattering excitedly as the entrance of the safe zone loomed ever closer.

Johnny looked back behind them, one eyebrow poised up as if he recognized the caller, and Clay kept the pace of his exhausted shuffle. 

Someone, far away, called out the name once more, and it sounded so familiar to him that this time, Clay stopped. A stranger bumped him before immediately shuffling along again, and they said nothing to each other.

“—Lay!” Watching carefully now, Clay saw an arm shoot up above the crowd, clearly, someone trying to get someone else’s attention, _his_ attention, and, without even really realizing it, Clay picked up the pace. Johnny’s voice echoed in his mind— _Daddy, who is it? Who is it?_ —and he patted his son on the arm, trying to tamper down the boy’s rising anxiety.

“I’m not sure, Johnny-Gee,” he said aloud, surprised at himself at how breathless he sounded in his own ears, “if it’s who I think it is...” he trailed off, and this time, much closer, Clay heard his entire Christian name.

“Clay? My God, Clay!”

And then the sea of people part suddenly, and it’s _Denise_ , Denise of all people, throwing her weight on him, her arms wrapped around his neck so tightly that it nearly chokes him but goddamn does it feel good to see her. She’s laughing into his shoulder, and when they part she immediately goes for Johnny, placing both of her hands on his shoulders squarely, her thumbs on his jaw so she can survey him.

“Clay, I can’t...is this Johnny? Is this your boy?” She asked him, unshed tears shining in her eyes in disbelief, turning Johnny’s head in her hands, “my God, and he looks alright! I can’t believe you found him, Clay. I just can’t believe it.”

The conviction, the raw emotion of disbelief in her voice was so strong that Clay can’t help the few tears that begin pooling in his own eyes, and before he could answer, movement behind her caught his eye. Standing against the throng of moving people (though a few of them stopped to watch the ongoing show), was Dan, a smile on his face that couldn’t quite meet his tired eyes. Swaddled comfortably in his arms was a newborn infant, still pink and fussy, capped with a puffball hat on its little head. 

Johnny tugged at his sleeve, and he looked down at his son.

 _“Friends? All friends_?”

Clay Riddell nodded to his boy. 

“Yeah, Johnny-Gee. Friends.” 

\-------  
“At a farm,” Dan told him, but it was Denise who gave Clay the specifics, the details, chattering along in excitement about how happy Tom and Jordan were going to be when they saw him, and the mere act of hearing their names again made his heart skip a beat.

“A farm, a huge plot of land that’s completely off the grid, mind you,” Denise puffed up her chest, and the baby let out a hiccup, “we can afford to live like royalty, since everyone’s, uh. You know.”

At this, Dan snuck a glance at Johnny, and turned his eyes away quickly. 

All of them were sitting in an empty diner, catching up on the things they'd lost in the past six months since Clay's absence, the establishment completely cleaned out after the massacre; smashed dishes and glasses crunched underfoot and not a waffle (or any food, really) in sight. From the mostly intact glass window, the lights of the base were visible.

“We tried to get Tom to go with us on this run but you know him.” Dan bounced the baby on his lap, and his eyes darted once more from Clay back down to Johnny, still unsure what to make of this silent, stoic child. Not that Clay could blame him, after everything that had occurred, but Johnny was _Johnny_ , his son. Nothing like the phoners they’d encountered in Kashwak. Clay reached down to squeeze Johnny’s fingers in solidarity, and, to his surprise, Johnny answered that by looking Dan straight in the eye, offering the man a small, unsure smile of his own. Shock playing on his face for a split second before remembering himself, Dan visibly relaxed, and offered a sincere looking grin. 

“Tom’s not really one for human contact,” Dan finished, shrugging at Clay, “He’s got his cat, Jordan for company, and the animals, and he’s good to go. Not that I can be mad at him, though, with all the awful stuff we saw out there. Honestly, I’ve had my fill of people for the next three-hundred years.”

“They’re gonna be so happy to see you, Clay. Both of you,” Denise added, punctuated with a soft pat on Johnny’s head, “Jordan asks about you every time we go out, and Tom…well—”

“Tom stands out on the Widow’s Walk like a housewife waiting for her husband to return from the war.” Dan added jokingly, laughing to himself at the thought. In his hands, the baby made a noise, a sleepy babbling sound that is almost like English to the untrained ear, before it falls quiet.

It’s likely a quip, but the thought of someone out there, someone alive, missing him that much made Clay’s heart fall into his stomach, and he had to clear his throat, to keep his voice steady for the next question.

“He, uh—misses me that much?” Apparently, nonchalantness is not Clay’s strong suit, as Johnny pins him with a look of absolute bewilderment, and Dan eyes him, squinting.

Denise didn’t seem to catch it, thank god; folding her hand atop Clay’s, smiling softly, she continued: “We all did, in truth. Whether we want to admit it or not, the things we experienced in Kashwak...bound us together, in a way. Like, you guys are certainly not the family I would’ve asked for—no offense—but—“

“‘Wouldn’t want to experience the end of the world with anyone else.” Dan finished for her, squeezing Denise by the shoulder. Clay briefly wondered if they were together, and tampered down his own sudden pang of jealousy that springs awake in his stomach. 

“Exactly. And, you guys are planning to stay with us for a while, right? I’ll give you a map before we leave.” At this, Clay furrowed his brow, shifting in the uncomfortable pleather seat.

“I…aren’t you guys coming back with us?” Dan scratched at the back of his head, staring out the window, and Denise began to say something, before falling silent, biting at her lip. 

Of course, Clay doesn’t mind traveling, especially if the end of the journey saw his reunion with Tom and Jordan, but the assumption in his mind had been that Denise and Dan and the baby were coming with them on this. It was Denise who moved first, hefting up her backpack from the glass ridden ground onto the filthy table shared between them. 

“Eventually. But first, we gotta make some trades.” 

At that, Denise zippered open her rucksack, presenting Clay with a full view of all kinds of food—-fresh meat, eggs, and bottles of milk tucked away safely, and even Johnny’s eyes widen, inadvertently reaching for the milk before Clay gently guided his hand away.

“You’d be surprised at how in demand fresh foods are. Hell, how in demand any foods are.” Dan picked up an uncooked brown egg in his fingers, twirling it far enough from the baby’s grabby hands, “and I’m here for...support, so to speak. You’d also be surprised at how willing certain people are to steal food from a _defenseless_ woman.”

“Fuck off,” the words left her mouth before Denise can stop them, turning to Johnny apologetically, “sorry, kid.” 

“And negotiations take a bit of time, especially since these things can get a bit delicate. The nice thing though is that our place—well, our and Tom and Jordan’s place, we live on the third floor—is that it’s only, what, Dan, four or five hours away? Not even a day’s trip, but until then you guys can stay with us. We have a place we pay for in the barracks.” She pointed to the shining military base, with survivors still trickling in.

“Sounds good to me,” Clay patted Johnny on the shoulder, willing both of them up and out of the booth. Dan, Denise and the baby followed suit. “Let’s get a good night’s rest so we can have an early head start tomorrow. Sound alright?” 

Johnny shrugged. The kid was never one for any complaints. 

  
\---  
Clay knew that it was much safer for them to travel in groups. The phoners were mostly gone, save for the few and far between clusters of only three or four that shambled together throughout empty neighborhoods and highways cluttered with abandoned cars, and more often then not, they were shot down within minutes of being spotted by the growing groups of armed vigilantes prowling those same areas. For loot, or out of sheer hatred for phoners, Clay never learned, but he’d certainly made a point to stay as far away from them as physically possible.

Both on the road _to_ Johnny and on the road _with_ his boy in tow, Clay knew that traveling always presented a risk, even with the zombie apocalypse technically being over, but three hours into their trip to the farm, Clay was delighted to find nothing but forest, miles and miles of forests, stretching out on either side of a long road covered in nature’s refuse from weeks of disuse. The trees loomed over them, so tall that in some places they created a dense canopy where the sun suddenly refused to heat the grey top road, and it was there—in one of these areas of shade—when Johnny finally asked him the million dollar question. 

Thankfully, their trip goes without issue. It’s a lot of forest, specifically the two of them traveling on the roads surrounded by forests on either side, and a lot of Clay tripping over stray rocks and branches while Johnny watches and tries not to giggle. 

“ _Who is Tom_?” Johnny asked him, his arms situated comfortably on the straps of his small rucksack. 

“I thought I already told you about him.” Clay shrugged the backpack with their few things—bottled water, some canned and bagged food, blankets—higher up on his shoulders, gasping at the effort it takes to both carry and traverse these treacherous roads. Given a momentary reprieve from the glaring sun by the tree canopy, Clay wiped the sweat from his forehead and trudged on. Denise and Dan were right about the place being remote. 

“He’s a friend I met, someone that helped me a lot during the—“ Clay paused. He never knew what to call it with Johnny, never knows what to say that won’t make his boy flinch as the memories flood back, but thankfully, he picked up the slack in his father’s silence.

“ _During the bad time_?”

“Yeah. During the bad time,” if Denise’s map is correct, they were still about two hours away from their destination. At some point, the road would suddenly veer left, leading to a trail blocked off by a ‘no trespassing’ gate, followed by a steep incline as the trail ascended. “Follow that to the end,” she had told them, squeezing Clay’s fingers as they bid each other goodbye, “there’s a break in the trees, and you can’t miss that bright red grain silo. The previous owner made sure of that.” 

“He’s a very nice man. Sort of quiet, like you,” _Well, like you now_ , Clay thought, because before the Pulse Johnny was as loud and vibrant as any pre-teen boy, but he kept this to himself, “you’ll also get to meet Jordan, another person we met during the, uh...bad time. He’s a little older than you, but hopefully you guys can find something to talk about. You know, whatever thirteen-year-olds are into nowadays.”

It’s a joke, and Clay’s smiling as he says so, but Johnny fixed him with a look that was all business and no play.

“ _What thirteen-year-olds were into_.” He said succinctly, sounding far beyond his years and so serious that the smile dropped from Clay’s face, “ _now I don’t think there’s many thirteen-year-olds around_.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” The air feels heavy around them suddenly, nothing but the sound of the animals scurrying around in the nearby forest to accompany them. It was time to change the conversation, but before Clay can get to it, it was Johnny that mind-spoke first.

“ _Is Tom special_?” Clay raises an eyebrow, and, a light blush rising on his cheeks, his son corrects himself quickly, “ _I mean, to you! Is he someone that you liked, like_ —“ 

Instead of saying it aloud, Johnny flooded Clay’s mind with pictures; inadvertently, Clay flinched, stopping in his tracks for a split second as pictures of her—of _Sharon, of Sharon in Johnny’s eyes, moving memories looking down and smiling at him, Sharon and himself a year ago, from the point of view of Johnny as they walked on either side of him during the celebration on Main Street, Sharon smiling and willing him closer in the community pool where they would go swimming for the summer, her eyes wide and brown and her arms extended to meet him_ —flashed through the soft meat of his brain, and Clay had to force himself to hold back a gasp.

“I...you could do that? I didn’t know you could do that,” he turned to Johnny, curious on what else his son was keeping from him, but before the boy could answer Clay beat him to the punch, “and, no! No, I don’t like Tom...in the way I liked mom.”

“ _You always get so excited when someone mentions him_ ,” Johnny pointed out, matter of factly, “ _you think about him more than you think about mom. Sometimes, you call out his name in your sleep_ —“

“Alright!” Clay slapped his hands over his ears, although it does little to drown out Johnny’s voice that is ringing in his head, “One: the second we get to this damned farm, I think we need to have a long talk about personal boundaries and not reading people’s minds!”

Johnny looked indignant at this, his brown eyebrows furrowed in what is either frustration or anger—Clay can’t tell.

“ _I can’t help it! You’re so loud when you think_!” And Clay turns his head to roll his eyes away from where Johnny can see it, and thinks to himself in the smallest, quietest voice he can imagine, ’ _well, what do you want me to do? Think quieter?_ ’

“ _Yeah_!” 

“And second,” he decided to let it go, for now—wasn’t like he could do much about it at that point in time, sweaty and exhausted in the middle of the woods, “do not tell Tom or Jordan anything like what you just said to me.”

“ _Because you like him_.”

Clay sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in between his pointer finger and thumb, “I do not, and because I don’t want to make anything weird for anybody while we’re there. Let’s just...I don’t know, focus on finding this stinking place for now.”

And with that, the conversation met to its inevitable end, with Clay lapsing into silence, focused on breathing and carrying at the same time, and Johnny staring at him, clearly unsatisfied by that answer. The animal calls continue unabated all around them, and Clay recognized the loud buzzing of cicadas somewhere beyond the trees, though only bugs like dragonflies and wasps flitted by him periodically. The land wasn’t even on an incline yet, but Clay still had to wipe the dripping sweat from his brow, the weight of the backpack becoming almost unbearable.

“Do you remember why cicadas make that chirping sound?” He asked Johnny, a hotbed of knowledge for insect and animal facts, “I think you told us one day. You learned it during school, or something.”

Johnny is silent for a moment—undoubtedly combing through memories that felt like they happened fifty years ago, after all that transpired—and just when Clay thought he’d forgotten, Johnny offered an explanation. “ _It’s a mating call. Only the male cicadas do the chirping, to attract a female mate. Miss White taught us that. She brought in some cicadas she bought at PetSmart to show us_.”

Clay bit at his bottom lip hoping that the trip down memory lane doesn’t upset Johnny too much, like it would in the past. During the various iterations of the mutated pulse that he shot up his son with, Johnny would go into hysterics at the mere mention of Sharon, letting out mind screams that left Clay partially deaf for upwards of half an hour and alerted nearby phoners to their location, but this time, Johnny walked in silence next to his father. And when he was ready to speak, he turned to Clay.

“ _Did you know Miss White had a girlfriend_?” Clay shook his head; no, he didn’t know that about Johnny’s fifth grade teacher, and nor did it make much of a difference at this point in time, with civilization on its last leg.

“ _One of the seventh graders. I think it was Kate Tozier that found her Facebook, and Miss White’s girlfriend was on one of the pictures with her. It spread around the school pretty quickly, so one day, instead of regular class, Miss White told us that she knew that we knew about the photos. She told us that there was nothing wrong about...liking someone, even if it was two boys or two girls. That even animals and insects don’t have to be, like, just one boy and one girl. The most important part is to be—what did she say? Proud to be in love. Something like that_.”

Clay was pretty sure that, to any passing bystander, it probably looked like he had seen a ghost. Eyes bulging out in their sockets, his mouth opened in an almost perfect O until a dragonfly flew too close for comfort, and he shut his jaw immediately. He hadn’t known about any of this. And, beside himself, Clay couldn’t help the next question that bubbled up from his throat.

“Did Miss White get fired?” 

He hoped not; that was a ballsy move on her part, but he was more than familiar with modern institutions who frowned and despised anything not completely heterosexual. He had gotten into it more then a few times with his publishers, when even the implication of one of his characters not being totally straight nearly caused his complete removal from the team. He figured Miss White had faired much worse at the hands of the public school system.

“ _I think they were going to, cause I know Elliot—you remember Elliot, right_?

“Yeah, I remember Elliot.” Mostly, Clay remembered his shit-eating, racist Christian folks Clay and Sharon had the displeasure of meeting during a parent teacher conference.

“ _Yeah, them. Elliot told me the next day that his parents were really mad at that, and there were a lot of people that wanted her gone, but then this_ ,” he gestured wildly around him, “ _happened_.”

“ _But what I want to say is: it’s alright with me if you like guys, Dad. It’s alright with me if you like Tom, and I know it would be alright with Mom, too. Whatever makes you happy, you know_?”

And, besides it all—besides the fact that Clay wasn’t even sure if he felt that way about Tom specifically, besides the fact that he was certainly still not over the death of his wife—Clay fought back the tears that begin forming in his eyes. It was a long road ahead, not just in terms of the farm and their inevitable, coming reunion with Tom and Jordan, but a long road for all of them to create a life worth living after everything else had been ripped away. He’d had his doubts when he first found Johnny in that state in their old home, no more able than a comatose child, than a feral beast that could do nothing but scratch and scream; for months, it seemed as if his son would never go back to the way he was before, a bright child, always soaking up the world and its rules like a sponge, and more than once he contemplated the piece they kept locked in the bedroom closet, turning the heavy pistol over and over in his hands, wondering when, as Johnny screamed and cried, he would pull the trigger. Wondering if he’d have the courage to shoot his own son, or leave him like that in a world that gunned down his kind. Leave the task for someone else to do.

Until that one, final, mutant pulse. Until the one that left his son completely mute, but able to think and reason for himself once more, that restored him back to his nine-year-old capacity. Though, from what both of them had suffered through, Johnny certainly seemed much older than a mere nine. Clay didn’t believe in God, not anymore, not after Kashwak and the Raggedy Man, and the way he’d seen poor Alice with her head bashed in—but he thanked him in that moment regardless, on the scalding hot road getting bitten up by mosquitoes and whatever else, thanked whatever higher power may or may not have been up there for bringing back his son, even if it isn’t in a way Clay had expected. 

_I love you, and I’m so proud of you_. Clay said this part with his mind, a little secret shared between the two of them, and Johnny smiled. With his mouth, Clay said:

“You’re a good kid, Johnny-Gee.” And ruffled his messy head of brown hair lovingly. They fall into step, and Johnny managed to rope him into a mostly one-sided conversation about bugs, while Clay thought about the first thing he’d say to Jordan, to Tom, after six months of absence, and whether or not Miss White was out there, somewhere, safe with her wife. He hoped she was, listening to the same cicadas. 


	2. a farm, and what johnny found there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clay and johnny make it to the farm, and clay fulfills a promise he made before things went to hell. the others reunite after a year of absence

When they broke through the tree line, Clay was entirely covered in sweat. It leaked down into his eyes, the salt stinging and blinding him momentarily, and it was Johnny that took his father’s hand in his own, pulling him along the flat, bright green land, healthy with ankle length grass floating in the breeze. The fluffy cumulus clouds across the sky add to the picturesque-ness of it all. When Clay can see again, the sight nearly takes his breath away. 

Denise was right. The red grain silo wasn’t missable, especially in the lowland away from the trees. A couple of miles away, a house, enormous and sprawling, sat on top of an incline. When they walked closer, Clay could see that it was once painted a light blue, now rotting away to reveal the base brown with the lack of descent repairs.

He and Johnny, still hand in hand, walked in step towards the structure, when they both hear the sound of an animal—the mooing of a cow, specifically—at the same exact time. Johnny, for all of his maturity after the zombie apocalypse, lit up in a smile that Clay hadn’t seen on his face for weeks.

“ _Cows, Dad_!” he said a little too loudly, and Clay winced as the sound reverberated through his skull, “ _They have cows here_!”

“Denise didn’t tell me about the cows. Hey, maybe if you’re really, really good, maybe Tom’ll let you milk one. How’s that sound?”

He’d promised Johnny something similar on his way back from Massachusetts; how they’d visit Jordy Verril’s local farm to ride the horses and pet the goats the weekend he was supposed to be home, and how excited Johnny had been at the prospect of running his fingers over a real-life cow, not like the ones in his books, and Clay wanted to dwell on the painful memory for just a little bit longer, to remember Sharon’s voice over the phone when he broke the news that he wouldn’t be able to make it, when the front door of the house swung open, and a lanky looking boy with something clutched in his fingers came running out. 

Clay paused; in the kid’s hands was something long—a sawed off shotgun, Clay realized—and it’s clear that at a distance, Jordan couldn’t see him properly. Before the situation can go any further, Clay raised his hands, cupping them against his mouth.

“Jordan, it’s me!” He waved his hands again, jumping in the air as if that would give him a better vantage point. “It’s Clay! Clay and Johnny!”

At first, Jordan didn’t seem to hear him. The gun was still pressed into his hands, although he wasn’t pointing it yet. There’s nothing protecting Jordan from them; all flat land, and if he were so inclined, Clay would have pulled the gun from his bag, and aimed a great shot. Clay would have to talk to them later about fortification, and he rolled his own eyes at himself—like he was ever a survivalist and not just a graphic arts designer. 

Jordan ran up, through the flat fields of green, and it wasn’t until the kid was a couple of feet away from the father and son pair that he finally abandoned the weapon, tossing it somewhere on the ground, and Clay wondered briefly if Jordan wore glasses before all this.

“Clay?! Holy fu—holy shit, Clay?”

And it takes less than a few seconds for Jordan’s lanky legged-self to clear the distance between them, and for the second time in two days Clay is nearly dragged to the ground as the teen threw his entire weight on him. And again, Clay felt the hot sting of tears coming up from his dry, wind-beaten eyes, and he made no effort to wipe them away.

“We thought we’d never see you again,” Jordan breathed out in a huff of air, allowing his own tears fall onto Clay’s shirt, “I still can’t…holy shit, how did you find us?”

Before Clay can even begin to form an answer, Jordan whirled back to the direction of the house, Clay in tow who drags Johnny behind him, screaming against the whipping wind.

“Tom! Tom! Come quick, he’s back!” 

Jordan was back on him in a millisecond, a thousand questions being hurled in Clay’s direction at once, “Did you see Denise and Dan, did you meet up with them, oh my god is that how you found us did you know Denise had her baby they named her—”

And finally, Jordan’s eyes seemed to settle on Johnny, taking him in for another second, before he directed his question at both of them.

“I—is this your son? Are you Johnny?” 

Johnny is kind enough to nod, and not to immediately scare off Jordan by mind-speaking directly to him, and Jordan’s eyes widen in amazement.

“That’s, I, I didn’t think...” he trails off, “then the mutated pulse worked?” 

”It did, kid,” Clay patted Jordan’s head appreciatively, “thanks to you.”

Jordan looked him over again, and nodded understandingly at Clay, his uncertainty of Johnny written all over the kid's long face, when someone else emerged from the open screen door. Clay knows who it is, _who else could it be?_ , and before he could even realize it, Clay started in the direction of the house, trying to keep his pace steady. _Don’t run, don’t run, Clay_ , but he can barely keep up with his own self-imposed orders when a man in a brown sweater-vest, clad with neat little oval glasses and also clutching a shotgun, came bursting from the front door. 

“Jordan!” He called, hefting the weapon upwards and immediately lowering it when he caught a glimpse of Johnny in his purple coat, and at the sight of another kid, immediately put the weapon down. And when he looked at Clay, really looked at him, his own deep, brown eyes widening in realization, the man dropped the gun and let it hit the dirt, as Jordan had done. Tom’s mouth was wide open in absolute shock, as if he couldn’t perceive the scene happening in front of him as something that was real, was tangible, until Clay cleared the distance between them and pulled him into a two armed embrace, tact be damned. He buried his face into the crook of Tom’s throat, and found that he quite liked the smell there—of raspberries, maybe, and a little bit of coffee, with an underlying tang of sweat—and it was only then, only after the few seconds of absolute shock and awe wore off, that Clay heard Tom saying something over and over again. Clay raised his head, looked the tweed little man dead in his misty eyes. 

“Holy shit, Tom,” Clay breathed, hands pressing down on Tom’s shoulders, “I still can’t—holy shit. I thought I’d never see you guys again. I’ve been looking for months, for months, after Johnny recovered from the pulse, and then I just happened to run into Denise and Dan and they told me about the farm, I would’ve told you we were coming but, you know, with the end of the world caused by cell phones and all—“ 

He must’ve been rambling something fierce, because Tom stopped him halfway with a sincere, but soft, “Clay, please be quiet.” 

And before Clay could other another sorry, Tom pulled him in for another hug. Against Tom’s shoulder, he felt another pair of arms around his back—undoubtedly Jordan—and when he looked up, Johnny stood nearby, twiddling his thumbs, unsure what to do next. Despite it all, there was a tease of a smile on his face.

—-

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Johnny.” They’d settled in the living room, and even though Clay could see the house was enormous, the size of the inside still impressed him totally. It had to have been at least twice the size of his and Sharon’s first apartment, a testament of the kind of opulent lifestyle the first homeowner had once led. Clay rested his head on the back of one of the couches in the middle of the room, his muddy boots discarded somewhere near the front door so he didn’t destroy the nice-looking carpet. The room was painted a deep brown (the previous owner certainly did have their taste in colors) adorned with paintings of the sea, of ships, dotted with sea memorabilia on the walls. A bookshelf with nothing but fishing tactics and knowledge on marine life lay on the other side of the wall, out of Clay’s sight, and there were two ways out; the door closest to the fireplace centerpiece led to the foyer, where a long staircase took them to the second and third floors of the house; and on the south end of the room, a small archway led to a kitchen painted yellow and orange, connected to the dining room. Of course, Johnny was perched next to his father, still peering around the house unsurely; Tom sat on the adjacent couch, while Jordan busied himself somewhere in the kitchen, the screen door to the back opening and shutting every few seconds. Johnny, unsure what to do with himself as Clay and Tom caught each other up to speed after nearly a year of absence, fidgeted, looking towards the door like he wanted to go outside. “Clay, I still can’t believe the pulse plan worked.” Tom shook his head for the thousandth time, smacking his palm against his broad forehead incredulously, “I mean, my god! It worked! Could you imagine what could’ve been if we’d known this before?” Clay bit the inside of his cheek. “Who we could’ve saved, right?” Unwillingly, he thought of Sharon, the last time he’d seen his wife as a soulless phoner, and the thought made him sick; Johnny caught the vibe immediately and looked to his father, one eyebrow poised upward. Tom leaned over, and laid his hand over Clay’s, looking apologetic. “There’s nothing we can do about it now,” he relented softly, comfortingly; maybe Clay was more of an open book than he thought, the way Tom looked at him as if he’d, like Johnny, could read his mind as well, “you got your boy back, safe and sound. And extremely mild-mannered, if I do say so myself. You and your wife raised a good one, here.” He patted Johnny on the head, and the kid beamed back at him with his tired eyes. “Yeah. We did, didn’t we?” Clay took a deep breath, and Tom pulled back, pushing up on the bridge of his glasses. The screen door at the back of the house opened; Jordan entered the living room, a thin sweat having broken out on his forehead, and from the open door, Clay and Johnny perked up at the lonely, long sound of a close-by animal. “Jordan, what did I say about shoes in the living room?” Johnny shot up, craning his head, trying to see from the living room to the wide field outside, looking for the source of the noise and tugging at Clay’s hand impatiently; and though he wasn’t addressing his father directly, Clay could hear the low hum of Johnny’s thoughts in his own ears, a constant repeating mantra of ‘cows, cows, cows, I want to go see the cows, daddy get up and lets see the cows’. 

And, of course, none of this escapes Tom; always the gentleman, even in the worst of times, looked at Johnny who was practically bouncing in his seat, squatted down to eye level with Johnny, maintaining a distance to give him some space.

“Would you like to see the cows, Johnny?” Tom offered a close lipped, yet genuine smile, and Johnny nodded so hard at the proposition that his entire body shook with the force of it. It was enough for even Jordan to let out a breathless, long laugh..

“Hell, I’d like to see the cows,” Clay admitted to them all, which sent them all, especially himself and Tom, into a round of fresh laughter, “I’m a born and raised city boy. Only time I’ve ever seen a cow in front of me was when it was on a plate and well done.”

“Well, then,” Tom stood without another word; shooting up from his knees, was enough to make the “old man” wobble a bit unsteadily, and to no one’s surprise Clay’s there, righting Tom with a hand over the man’s lower back.

“Oof! Don’t mind me, there. Let’s go; you all came at a great time. The cows are grazing at the moment, though we have to put them back in the pen when night comes.” They trailed in one straight line through the kitchen, straight to the backdoor; first Jordan, then Johnny, Clay and Tom bringing up the rear, and right outside their back porch lay another green field, but this one was spotted with brown cows. Brown cows, some with white spots. 

Johnny nearly tripped over himself getting down the porch steps, and went to the closest animal, arm outstretched and ready to pet, until something made him think better of it. He turned to Tom and his father, still standing on the porch and watching this almost picturesque scene.

“ _Why is it brown?_ " He asked, dropping all subtlety and simply transmitting the question to their brains directly; apparently, it was a wide range signal, and neither Tom nor Jordan had experienced anything like it since the phoners. Jordan’s hands went straight to his ears, an immediate reflexive response, and Tom shivered to himself, throwing an unreadable look at Clay. Clay readied himself to provide a less than satisfactory answer, but Tom beat him to it, having recovered quickly. 

“They’re, uh...what are they called again, Jordan?” Jordan was a little preoccupied, pinning down Johnny with a squint in his dark brown eyes, untrusting, “Gooernsey? Guernsey cows. There’s a lot of different kinds of dairy cows, Johnny, and I suppose that the man that lived here before us wanted chocolate milk.” 

Johnny smiled at the lame joke, and Clay smiled at Tom for telling the lame joke; they made eye contact, and Clay mouthed ‘I’ll explain later’, and in response he got a very subtle, very slight nod of the head. Jordan, at some point, had taken a couple steps away from Johnny, and immediately went to hide himself behind Tom as he and Clay climbed down the steps to the porch, joining Johnny who was still keeping his own distance from the enormous animal. The cow seemed indifferent to the trials and tribulations of humans; it’s tail flicking away fat, black flies, it grazed on a grass patch. 

Johnny took one step closer, but the animal raised its head slightly, and he immediately fell back. 

“It’s alright,” Tom, very, very gently, pushed him forward, one hand over Johnny’s shoulder, and his other touching the cow on its side, against a wide patch of white, “these cows are very nice, so long as you treat them nicely.”

Johnny, wide eyed and excited, nodded up at Tom, taking his word as gospel as he followed the man’s advice and gently stroked the cow on its hind legs, the same way Clay had taught him how to be gentle with the family dog he and Sharon bought as newlyweds, Coco.

“ _How do you know which cow is which?_ ” Johnny asked. Once again, Jordan threw his hands up over his ears, walking backwards towards the house, an action that did not escape Johnny, though he said nothing about it. Tom didn’t flinch, though; he gently took the yellow tag hanging by the cow’s ear and showed Johnny the black number that had been printed on the side. 

“That’s how we know. Each of the cows here have a tag that says their numbers, so we know which is which. There’s also a list of names in the barn, too, that the old owner left. I think this is Marigold,” Tom paused, observing the name again, “or Lola. I get them confused sometimes.”

“There was one that was born during the pulse,” Jordan returned to the fray, keeping his weary eye on Johnny, but lining up next to Clay, rocking on his heels as he spoke, “and that one doesn’t have a tag. And we don’t know where the first guy put the tagging gun, or whatever it is people use to do that, and we didn’t want to hurt it, so...”

Tom sighed, “We tried to mark it’s flank with a Sharpie. Jordan chose the design.”

The preteen beamed. “It was a smiley-face.” 

And Clay couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that emerged from his throat; taking after his boy, he walked on the other side of Tom and lay his palm on the cow’s head as it grazed, surprised at the muscle and soft fur there.

“So you’re telling me there’s a cow with a smiley-face on its ass walking through these fields right now?” 

“That’s nothing. You should’ve seen us trying to figure out how many chickens we had.”

At this, Johnny whirled around from the cow, surprising them all.

“ _You have chickens_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had to look up types of cows for this one, lol. any people who work with cows out there reading this, please don't come for me, i know nothing about farm life


	3. the farm, and what clay found there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clay gets a taste of what life could be like, after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the clay/tom chapter. this is also the final chapter for now, so i suppose it has no choice but to be the clay/tom chapter.

“It hasn’t been easy.” Tom admitted. 

The basket of eggs in the counter went straight into the fridge, and from his line of sight Clay can see that Jordan and Tom have been pretty busy in his absence. The fridge was stocked with meat, certainly from the animals outside, along with no shortage of eggs, and a couple bottles of white milk. Clay wondered what it tasted like without the aid of additives. At the dining room table, Johnny sat working on a plateful of scrambled eggs, shoving them into his mouth as if he’d not had a taste of decent food for years. In a cruel sort of irony, Henrietta, the most docile hen of the bunch, marched below Johnny’s feet and under the table, pecking at the scraps Johnny tossed to her. 

“Especially with milking the cows. The chickens are pretty good with laying frequently, but I can’t seem to get the hang of milking.” Tom shrugged, caught Clay looking into the fridge, and offered him a bottle of milk that clinked against the countertop as he set it down in front of him. 

“Here. Try.” Tom held up the bottle, and Clay took a sip from the rim of the glass. Immediately, he regretted it.

“Oh, Christ! This tastes like ass, Tom!” Clay spit up what he could, booking it to the refrigerator in search of something to wash the taste out of his mouth. Eventually, he settled on a half-used juicebox (likely scavenged from a run into town), and the peppy taste of ‘grape explosion’ filled his mouth. Tom eyed the milk distrustfully.

“Well if it tastes like ass, I probably can’t give the kids this,” as if it was a physically painful thing for him to do, Tom poured the contents of the bottle into the drain, turning away as the chunky, curd looking liquid disappeared into the mouth of the sink. “I just don’t get the science of getting good milk from a cow. I was a tax attorney before this. What the hell do I know about taking care of animals?”

Clay shrugged. He knew about as much as Tom knew. “I suppose we can Google it.” And the two of them looked at each other, before bursting into laughter. At this, Henrietta clucked loudly, clearly in distress, and Johnny gathered the hen up in his arms and padded towards the living room.

“Johnny, don’t go too far with that chicken!” Clay called to his son, and the response was immediate and clipped: “ _I’m not._ ”. 

“Who would’ve thought that the worst thing about a zombie apocalypse,” Tom started, pulling out a cast-iron skillet from one of the lower drawers of the kitchen, “would be the fact that we can’t get Internet anymore? I feel like this whole thing would’ve been so much easier if I could just search something like ‘how to properly care for farm animals’.”

Ever the master at multitasking, Tom hurried to and fro across the pretty decently sized kitchen space, pulling out spices from racks, and starting the electric stove with a quick hand that lit one of the matches on the counter and lit the burner aflame.

“I wish you could’ve seen the first time that I had to kill and skin a chicken,” he shook his head, the memory undoubtedly playing in his mind, “it was awful. There was blood all over the place, I kept cutting myself on the bones. At one point I had to walk away to throw up.”

Clay leaned over the counter, the thought of a bloodied, shaking Tom with a butcher knife in one hand and a chicken’s severed head in the other. The image bordered somewhere between the space of badass and depressing. 

“So how’d you manage?” Clay asked. 

“Denise,” Tom admitted a bit sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head before pulling out some other things—an onion and some potatoes, specifically—from the fridge, “turns out she comes from a long line of slaughterhouse workers, thank god. Can’t milk a cow for squat, but she sure can kill one, hypothetically speaking. We’re a little less keen on killing the cows.”

The uncooked chicken breasts sizzled as they hit the skillet, and the smell immediately made Clay’s mouth water. He felt a little useless, standing there in a kitchen that wasn’t his, twiddling his thumbs together as Tom busied himself.

“Can I help out in any way?” 

Tom nodded, extending a sharp knife in Clay’s direction. He took it wordlessly, along with the onions and potatoes Tom dropped into his hand.

“You can chop those up, if you don’t mind? Normally I don’t ask my guests for any manual labor, but since I started dinner so late today...”

Clay snorted, “So now you’re blaming me for the life-threatening trek we took to find you guys for dinner being late? I might as well just take my happy ass back to Maine, then!”

“You might as well,” Tom agreed, chuckling to himself and shaking his head. Their litttle shared space filled with the smells of freshly cooked food made by loving hands, and the two men lapsed into a comfortable silence; somewhere out in the living room, Clay heard the excited candor of Jordan’s voice, asking Johnny questions, where the response was always silence. Can you hear my thoughts? What am I thinking of right now? 

Tom’s glasses glinted in the light of the kitchen. A thin layer of sweat had begun against his clear, brown forehead, and for a second Clay wondered to himself ‘who is this lucky man who never breaks out even in times like this?’ before nodded, pulling the cutting board closer. At the sweat buildup on his head, Tom’s glasses started slipping off of his nose, and it was Clay who leaned in and tapped the bridge of Tom’s glasses with the clean side of his palm, pushing them back up. 

“I...your glasses were falling off and you seemed busy,” good save, Riddell. Tom stayed at him quizzically, looked like there was something that he wanted to say and that it was on the tip of his tongue, before deciding better of it and leaving Clay with a succinct nod. 

With his head turned toward the cutting board, slicing potatoes with a less-than-precise hand, Clay snuck a peek from the corner of his eye at Tom. Sometime during their months of absence, Tom had completely shaved off his tweedy mustache that made him look like an eccentric arts collector; he’d cut the curly hair on top of his head short. If Clay looked close enough, he could see the dark, tiny moles that dotted the side of Tom’s face, and the nicely placed one on the shell of his ear. 

He had a strange, sudden urgency to run his tongue over it; and, as if Tom could read his mind like Johnny, he looked over. Clay darted his eyes away, started on the onions once more. 

“Sharon and I used to have nights like this.” It came from his mouth instantaneously, so fast that even Clay looked up, into the small kitchen window that looked out onto the grassy plains outside, torn between wanting too keep those precious memories to himself and wanting to share them with someone else.

And this time, Tom looked up, head cocked and eyes open. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” he said, clearing his throat into his shoulder. More than once, in the close quarters of the kitchen, Tom’s pant leg brushed up against his sweatpants. Damn him and his restless legs. 

“We stopped shortly after John was born, but we’d have these nights where we didn’t want to order in or anything,” Clay let out a half-laugh, half-exhale, and Tom said nothing and let him remiss, “and we didn’t want to eat anything healthy, so what we would do is try to create the most fattening, greasy thing we could just using what we had in the kitchen. It sucked most of the time, and usually we’d end up ordering takeout by the end.”

“But, once in a while, we came up with some pretty good stuff, too. She made this, like, bagel-pizza thing from parmesan and these super old pepperonis that she found stuffed in the back of the freezer. Gave us both food poisoning for the rest of the weekend, but hell if it wasn’t great going down.” Both of them, doubled over in pain—her in their shared bathroom, him in the guest—passing Pepto Bismol back and forth, howling in both laughter and pain in between bouts of vomiting, Clay this was a fucking horrible idea, why did I let you talk me into this—

He was surprised to feel both Tom’s hand at his back, rubbing in circles as if comforting a newborn, and the hot tears that stung his face, that fell and plopped against the blacktop counter. 

“It’s the onions,” joked Clay, through a mouthful of his own choked breath, “damned things.” 

“It’s all right, Clay.”

And, beside himself, Clay’s hiccuping laughter turned to long, silent sobs as he slid downward, onto the freezing kitchen floor, suddenly too tired to stand on his own two feet. 

And Tom followed him down, such a little man that his fingers didn’t even touch as he wrapped his arms around Clay’s broad back, whispering affirmations quietly enough for only Clay to hear—it’s all right, Clay, it’s ok, we’re gonna be alright—and letting Clay rest his snotty nose and tearful face on his freshly washed and dried sweater, sobbing pathetically into Tom’s neck. 

They sat like that together on the freezing kitchen floor, Tom holding Clay _the way Sharon used to on his bad nights_ until the smell of burning food seared both of their nostrils. 

\-----  


“So how did it feel when you were a phoner?” Jordan asked him on their second attempt at dinner, the mouthful of smoked beef garbling his words, but not to the point of incoherence. Half-eaten flecks of food dotted Jordan’s area, and Tom handed him a napkin, looking stern.

“Jordan...” he trailed off warningly, throwing an embarrassed sigh Clay’s way before addressing Johnny, “Johnny, you don’t have to answer that question if you don’t want to. I know that was probably a...difficult time for you.”

“Putting it nicely.” Clay finished, taking the biggest bite of his burger that his mouth would allow. 

Put on the spot, Johnny seemed a little put off, and for a moment Clay wasn’t sure he would answer; but the kid shrugged softly, and looked at them.

" _It was really strange,_ " said Johnny, and both Tom and Jordan shivered, unused to the sensation of having thoughts transmitted directly to their minds; Jordan, out of habit perhaps, immediately tried to throw up a wall in his brain. Johnny watched each of the bricks pile higher, before he transmitted to Jordan alone—" _don’t want to read your thoughts. You asked me a question, remember?_ "

Before Jordan lowered his psychic defenses, staring at Johnny like the kid had just grown a second head. Clay knew that he would have to keep an eye on these two for a while, at least until they fell into an easier routine. From the beginning, because of his Phoner past and his telepathic abilities, Jordan, frankly, had little trust in Johnny (not that Clay could blame him, with all the shit that kid went through), but, thankfully, he wasn’t downright hostile with his son. Johnny seemed to appreciate the companionship as well, but he especially seemed to like helping Tom with the chores around the farm.

" _I don’t really know what happened, when I was part of_ "—Johnny searched for the word, combing from his archives stolen from the memories of his father—" _the flock? But I remember it was warm, and buzzy. Like bees_ ". 

He craned his eyes towards his dad, hesitant to continue this conversation; Clay never liked to hear anything about Johnny’s time with the other Phoners, under complete control of the signal. 

He’d tried to explain it to his father a couple of times, when he’d gone from mildly/coherent and still barely able to form words besides “daddy” and “mama” and “toy” to speaking full sentences as the signal developed his mind, and each time Clay changed the subject to something safer, as if, which each dial and new Pulse against Johnny’s ear, he wanted to keep that awful past as far away from the present as he possibly could. 

This time, however, Clay stared at his son with an expression that was a mixture of interest, and pain; but he suffered through it, if only to put the minds of the others at ease. To have them view Johnny as his own independent person, and not as a part of the flock. 

Jordan pursed his lips, clearly thinking about this new information that had been relayed to him. 

“I’ll tell you what though,” Jordan pushed his fork at another piece of meat, shoveling it into his mouth, “that telepathy thing is actually pretty fucking cool. And, pretty fucking weird.”

“Jordan!” 

—————

Johnny fell asleep shortly after dinner, and Clay placed the limp body of his son on one of the couches downstairs. He draped a heavy down comforter on Johnny-Gee, and gave him a goodnight kiss on his forehead.

In the other room, the kitchen light shined through, warm and inviting, and Clay padded along the wood floor as Tom wiped the scraps from their plates into the trash. 

“So.”

“So...”

Clay wriggled his eyebrows, in a mock-suggestive gesture, “now that the kids are asleep...”

And Tom couldn’t help but laugh softly to himself. He cocked his head in the direction of the backdoor, and pushed the screen open, beckoning Clay to follow. 

for a reason he couldn’t comprehend, he leaned in, milking another hug out of Clayton Riddell, who accepted it graciously. Tom ran his hands over Clay’s arms, feeling the soft material of Clay’s thermal sleeved shirt (in dire need of a good washing), and stepped back, giving Clay’s cold fingers one last squeeze before turning his eyes out towards the window, to vast expanse of green farmland. 

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he admitted quietly, the awed reverence in his tone thick, and Clay felt the blush rising to his cheeks and ears, “we thought—I thought—that was the end, Clay. I really did. But you’re here, and you’re alive, and most importantly you’ve got your boy back. Feels like a dream, almost.” 

“Better than a dream.” Clay admitted softly. Whether or not Tom had heard him, he wasn’t sure; instead, Tom still faced the green grass, his arms covering what little of his torso he could, shivering as the howling wind brought them one day closer to a freezing winter. 

Sharon appeared in his mind, suddenly; more specifically, the younger versions of themselves, when life seemed alright, if not downright fantastic, carrying a baby version of Johnny in their arms. 

They’d gone to Vermont to celebrate the sale of his first major comic, and for Sharon’s pay raise at the hotel, and the memory is so sharp that Clay can nearly taste it—the three of them, just the three of them, decked out in snow-gear, crunching their way through fresh snowfall, following their guide around diligently as they did stupid tourist things like gathering maple syrup from trees; Sharon, her long, brown hair blowing straight into her face as she’s trying to screw the sticky bottle cap back on, giggling the entire time; himself, and Johnny, just a dab of syrup on his fingertip, and Johnny, no more than one or two at the time, sucking down syrup like it was the greatest thing he’d ever tasted (and at that point in his short life, it probably was) while Sharon fussed. “Clay, don’t you think it’s too cold for the baby he’s going to get frostbite if we stay out here any longer and be careful how much of that syrup you give him you know sugar is addictive for kids—”

He missed her something fierce. It weighs heavy on him, the absence of his wife and the mother of his child, and Clay finds himself in the same position as Tom; staring across an empty plain, looking up at the moon in the sky, fat and full tonight. Did she suffer? was there still a chance, no matter how small, that Sharon was still out there among the groups of wandering Phoners, corrupted by the faulty Pulse? 

It hurt to think of these things, left an ache in his chest that he knew he’d never be able to fulfill, and so Clay laid a hand on Tom’s shoulder. Time to shake him out of his own reveries. 

It was a little chilly outside, so Clay wrapped his jacket—courtesy of the first homeowner, who must’ve been a goddamn giant, the way this thing hung on Clay’s six-foot-frame—against his shivering body. He hoisted himself up against the rail of the porch. Always the modest one, Tom took his place alongside, propping his elbows up against the railing so he could stare out into the field. The only light came from the moon.

“We should think about fortifying this place,” Clay said suddenly, the open field reminding him distantly of the conversation he had with himself. He took a sip from the whiskey, and it burned pleasantly in his abdomen. “I realized how easily I could kill Jordan.”

When Tom stared at him in horror, Clay corrected himself with a guffawed laugh. “As in, it would be very easy for me to shoot him on this open terrain! Not like I want to shoot him, nor was I thinking of shooting him. I mean, technically I was, but...never mind. What I’m saying is that we need a fence, maybe. Ideally something electrified.”

“I was thinking about minefields.” Tom said, and the idea of him—quaint little Tom, who seemed perturbed when he disturbed the bluejays outside his window during their slumber—talking about explosives made him giggle again, “I’m serious. Minefields in the grass or bear traps, or something. Though I think the bear traps would be a bit obvious. Maybe when the grass grows over in the summer.”

“We can think about it in time. Have you guys had any trouble with drifters or anything like that?”

Tom shook his head. “No. The closest thing to an actual problem that we have are the stray coyotes that come wandering in the area, trying to get at the animals. Dan and I cooked one of them up, once. Meats a bit too stringy and gamey for my liking.”

“So. Does that mean you’re staying?”

Clay shrugged, tried to play it cool. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Of course I do. I prefer having us on top of each other—“ Clay whirled around to face him, “—space wise, in terms of space, Instead of wondering if you’re...alive out there.”

“Dan told me that you wait for me outside on the widow’s walk.”

“Dan doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because the Widow’s Walk is broken.” 

The temperature was dropping fast, and already Clay was having a hard time feeling his fingers; they wouldn’t be able to take this cold much longer. 

“We have to go back inside, Tom,” Clay pulled him by the arm, ever-so-slightly trying to guide him back towards the house. There was a fireplace in the foyer, he was fairly sure; once he got them back in the house and secure, Clay would go about starting a fire for the two of them, something to warm them up. “It’s getting too cold out here. Would have to lose you from pneumonia after I just found you guys again.”

A beat of silence passed, with Tom still trying to curl in on himself.

“Do you think Alice would’ve liked it here?”

The question caught him off-guard completely. Clay’s eyes widened, and he blinked to steady himself, almost surprised to feel the sting of tears once again at the mere mention of their old friend. God, it felt like all of it—the parkway, the confrontation, the brick, Alice twitching and dying horrifically far beyond her time—happened two lifetimes ago, when in reality everything that had happened to all of them struck in a timeline of mere months, mere weeks. 

A year ago, he was headed home with a paperweight in his pocket. One year later, here he was; comforting an old man, living on a farm as one of the few survivors of a global pandemic, with a mute son capable of telepathy. ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’ his ass. 

As gently as he could manage, Clay lead Tom away from the front porch, one arm seated comfortably around his midsection as he lead him away from his own brooding thoughts. Clay knew firsthand where they would bring you, and it wasn’t a pretty road. 

“Alice would’ve loved it here.” He said to Tom. She would’ve, too; and Tom wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, and Clay sat him down by the unlit stove, throwing a bundle of sticks into its black maw before pulling out an errant pack of matches from his jean pocket and lighting a flicker of flame. 

He tossed it onto the pile, and as he waited for it to light, made sure the door was triple locked and the windows shuttered and bolted. From the hall closet, he pulled out another grey comforter, this one wider than the one Johnny currently possessed, and draped it over his own shoulders. As Tom sat in front of the fire, watching it crackle and pop, Clay sat cross-legged next to his friend. He threw the rest of he blanket across Tom’s shoulders, who accepted it with a shiver, pulling it closer with his body. He eyed Clay nervously, as if unsure of what to do next. 

“Why didn’t you get two?” He asked. 

Why didn’t he get two? Clay thought to himself, but instead, he shrugged. “We can share.” 

Tom was silent for a long moment in time, so still that Clay could feel the other man’s heartbeat softly shaking his body every few seconds, and he felt it begin to beat faster as Clay shrugged the other side of the thick comforter over his own shoulders, scooting his butt across the carpeted floors so he sat with the side of his leg pressed against Tom’s, their left and right hips touching. 

“I thought...” Tom began, and then thought better of it; his thought trailed off into a quiet, incredulous chuckle as he shook his head, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was an attempt at seduction. You’re a very suave man, Clay Riddell.” 

“Maybe I am trying to seduce you, Mr. McCourt. We can grow old together. Raise two kids on the coastline.” He pressed his knee against Tom’s; from the exposed flesh of his knee length lounge pants, the man was still freezing cold from the chill outside. “Learn how to get good milk from a cow and start a business, maybe.” At that, Tom snorted. 

“I know that’s a joke, Clay, but that actually sounds really nice.” Tom sighed, laying his head on Clay’s shoulder, pressing himself in the crook of Clay’s neck and breathing in the scent of him there. A pang of regret and a twinge of sadness was the first emotion that he felt with striking intensity—was this cheating on Sharon? Did it matter any more, here, at the end of the world?

“It actually does, doesn’t it?” he admitted aloud, weirdly content by the idea of living out the rest of his life in the solitude of this farm, no one else but their little group to keep in contact with. Raising Johnny and Jordan and helping out with Denise’s baby, kids who (God knew) needed structure in their lives after the horrors they’d experienced during the downfall of humanity. 

“And then once we get Dan and Denise back into the mix,” Clay muttered, turning his head so he could speak against the warm skin of Tom’s cheek, “we can have, like, a weird, child-rearing slash farm animal compound going. Like a cult.”

“That’s not how a cult works, Clay,” Clay stroked his fingers against the clothing covering Tom’s side; lifted the sweater and ran his fingers over the warm flesh over his hip, “we’d need to have a core belief, for one. And I don’t think any of us are religiously inclined.” 

“Huh. Good point.” 

They sat in comfortable silence, watching the crackling fire. Clay listened to Tom breathe, the way his body relaxed for longer and longer periods on the exhale, the way his body uncoiled against Clay’s after a long day. I missed you, Clay thought to himself, pressing his lips against Tom’s widow’s peak, and burying his own face in the man’s hair. We can make this work, was the second thought that came to him, unbidden, and somewhere on the couch, Johnny’s hen clucked softly. 

“We can make this work,” Clay said, sniggering once more as his lips unexpectedly found themselves against the fragile lens of Tom’s glasses. Tom stirred when he spoke; he lifted himself from his space in Clay’s neck, and pinned him with a sleepy, confused look.

“Which part?” Tom asked softly, curiously; but the answer was silenced as Clay pressed his lips against Tom, dry and warm and faintly tasting of something sweet. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you all want to skip to the heavier clay and tom content, you'll find it in chapter three.


End file.
